Business Analytics: Current State & Challenges

At present time and state of the market where businesses and organizations are striving hard to survive and improve performance due to high availability of similar products and services, business processes or products are playing less and less significant role when it comes to differentiate oneself from the others. As a result, more and more firms are leaning towards selecting one or a few distinctive capabilities on which they base their strategies on and then apply extensive quantitative analysis to support the selected capability. In this paper we have examined how analytics is delivering values for various internal and external processes. Form an internal view point, processes related to financial, manufacturing, research and development, and human resources are significantly using analytics. From an external process view point, analytics is presently used in client relations, marketing, supply chain optimizations and in few other processes. We have presented the business functions in different industries that are currently generating insight from analytics and also pointed out areas that could benefit from an analytical approach. In conclusion, we have drawn attention to the challenges that are inevitable when embarking on the analytical journey and commented on the approach that should be taken.